Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/230

 To them she was so proud; to him she was so humble.

When he threw her a soft word or two of thanks, she was repaid a thousandfold; when at nightfall she sat at her spinning, and he told her old-world stories of all that Maremma has seen since the mammoth pulled down the foliage of its esculus-oaks, she was so happy that her thoughts never travelled past that glad immediate hour.

She knew nothing of her own danger.

The only fear that ever quickened her pulse was when in the hush of night she heard the call of the bittern booming over the marshes, or the loud rush of the wild duck's wings through the air, and trembled lest the sound should be the coming of armed men to break into her sanctuary.

Now and then a quiver of sharper alarm ran through them both, when she saw any figure of shepherd or hunter on the horizon, when the mounted buttero crashed through the thickets chasing a brood-mare or a bull-buffalo, when the shots sounded from the marshes or the estuaries, or the boar with the hounds on his flanks burst through the evergreen brakes.

But these alarms were few and far be-